Undaunted

“Want to lead me to my door?” he invited.

“I might as well. At least you’re not lost,” she added.

He held out his hand.

Odd, how it felt to hold his hand, to feel the warm strength of that big, beautiful hand against her skin. She had to fight to keep her confusion from showing.

“Where do you live?” she asked, because she wasn’t supposed to know.

“Pine Cottage. There’s a sign.”

She let out a breath. “Oh, it’s there. I see it.”

He hesitated. She tugged, just gently.

“It’s this way,” she said softly, letting him catch up without making an issue of it. She walked very slowly, very carefully, so that he was on the path and didn’t walk into obstacles like rocks that could throw him off balance. “Three steps,” she said. “This is the first one.”

He went up them with no seeming difficulty and stopped. “You’re quite good at this.”

“I practice on little old ladies who can’t find their glasses,” she returned, tongue in cheek.

He smiled. It wasn’t a cold, formal or social smile, either. And he hadn’t let go of her hand.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“The Energizer Bunny?” she suggested.

“Try again.”

“I’m Emma,” she said, having fought the impulse not to lie to him. But there had to be a zillion women named Emma. He wouldn’t connect her. He probably didn’t even know her name. He’d have no reason to want to know it. He’d connected her with the near-miss on the Jet Ski before Mamie’s party, when she’d been driving the boat, but that was just physical recognition. Mamie had said that he didn’t know Emma except as her assistant. He hadn’t asked for her name.

“Emma what?” he asked.

“Copeland,” she replied.

His lips pursed. “Think you could find your way back here?”

She hesitated. “I found it because I was lost.”

“I’m having Barnes drive you home,” he said surprisingly. “He can pick you up where he drops you off, yes?”

Her heart was racing. “Why would I want to be picked up?”

“Breakfast,” he said simply.

“Breakfast?”

“Eggs, bacon, pancakes...strong black coffee,” he added.

“My friend has Pop-Tarts.” She groaned.

He grinned. “Eggs, bacon, pancakes—”

“Don’t! You’re torturing me! What time?”

“Eight a.m.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sleep late?”

“I go to bed at nine,” she said. “Eight a.m. is late to me.”

He chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll see you soon, Emma.”

“Who are you?” she asked, because she couldn’t give herself away. Not yet.

“Connor.”

“Connor. It’s nice.”

“I’m not,” he cautioned, his silver eyes flashing at her.

“Pop-Tarts might not be so bad...” she began.

He grinned. “I’ll try to be nice. Just for breakfast.”

“Okay.”

“Barnes!” he called.

A short, older man came in, smiling. “Yes, sir?”

“Take Emma back to her roommate,” he said, indicating Emma. “And make sure you remember where you drop her, so you can pick her up in the morning and bring her back for breakfast.”

“Yes, sir. Are you ready to go, Miss Emma?” he asked in his slow, sweet Georgia drawl.

“I am.”

“Good night, Emma,” Connor said with a smile.

“Good night.”

* * *

She had Barnes drop her off at the Frenchwoman’s house. She waved him off and then asked Jeanne Marie if it was all right that she pretended to live there. She couldn’t explain, she added, but she promised it was nothing illegal or immoral.

Jeanne laughed and said of course it was all right. When Emma told her about the next morning’s appointment, Jeanne said that was fine, as well. She was curious. Emma just blushed, and Jeanne asked no more questions.

* * *

All night, Emma agonized about going to breakfast at Connor’s. It seemed like a sound idea, to get to know him, just a little, and then confess what she’d done. If he knew her, he might not jump to conclusions that she’d hit him on purpose.

But it was risky, just the same. She couldn’t go back to her father. She couldn’t go to her friends in Jacobsville, either, without putting them in the line of fire. She knew they wouldn’t mind, but they’d already done enough for her.

At eight the next morning, she got into the expensive sedan with Barnes at the wheel and let him take her to Pine Cottage.

“Eggs, bacon, pancakes,” she enthused as she walked into the dining room and took a long sniff. “What a delicious smell!”

Connor was sitting there at the head of the table, his broad face smiling, his head cocked slightly to one side. He wore a green polo shirt with tan slacks and deck shoes. He looked expensive and so sexy that he made Emma’s toes curl.

But those thoughts were destructive. He was just a man she’d met on the lake. That was all he could ever be.

“It tastes as good as it smells,” he assured her. “Edward has cooked for me for over a decade, but he didn’t want to live on a lake in Georgia. So I left him at my house on the Riviera years ago and hired Marie,” he indicated an older woman with silver hair and a bright smile, “who has a way with herbs and spices.”

Emma started to pull out a chair for herself when Barnes came out of nowhere to do it for her. “Miss,” he said politely, bowing.

“Thanks,” she replied shyly.

“Barnes practically came with the property.” Connor chuckled. “His mother kept house for my father, on his rare visits here.” His face tautened, as if the memory wasn’t a pleasant one.

“It’s true,” Barnes said, smiling. His eyes twinkled. “He’s a terrible boss,” he added suddenly. “You should see him when he loses his temper.”

“Shut up while you still have a job,” Connor muttered, but his eyes were twinkling, too. He waved a hand. “Go build something.”

Barnes winked at Emma and left, grinning.

Connor chuckled. “He weaves baskets as a hobby. He picks up vines out of the woods and twists them into all sorts of shapes. There’s one of his on a side table. Over there, I think.” He indicated an elegant-looking basket on a side table.

“It’s really beautiful,” she said, surprised. Her knowledge of baskets was scanty, but that one looked professional.

“He could make a living with them if he wanted to,” he said. “He has his own website. He sells to designers all across the country.” He shook his head. “When he makes his first million, I’ll have to have a stranger drive me everywhere.” He raised his voice. “I’ll probably be killed in a horrible wreck!”

“I will never make millions!” Barnes called back. “And if I do, I’ll still drive you!”

“Okay,” Connor called back. His sightless eyes were twinkling. Barnes threw up a hand and went out the back door.

“He drove me mad at first. But I tend to get moody. I don’t like strangers in my house, as a rule.”

She fingered her empty coffee cup and remained quiet.

“I didn’t mean you, if that’s what the silence is about,” he mused.

She laughed softly. “Okay.”

He looked in the direction of her voice. “Well? Are you pouring coffee or meditating on it?” he chided.

“I, well, I wasn’t sure if you said grace or...”

“Grace?”

Her eyes widened at the venom in his tone.

His pale eyes glittered with bad humor. “I’m not much on religion. Just pour the coffee. And if you want to say grace, say it silently, please,” he added curtly.

She didn’t know what else to do. She nodded. Then she realized that he couldn’t see her, and guilt washed over her like a wave.

“Well?” he prompted, his tone cutting.

“Sorry. Coffee?”

“Obviously I want coffee. Hence the empty mug right here.” He fumbled for it and rattled it.

“You are a very unpleasant man!” she pointed out.

“And I work hard at it, too.”

She grimaced as she poured his coffee.

He reached for it, managed it on the second try and lifted it to his mouth. “I want bacon and eggs. No pancakes.”

She got up and ladled them onto a plate. She put the plate down in front of him, caught his big hand and put a fork in it. “Bacon at three o’clock, eggs at nine o’clock. Buttered toast?” she added.

“I don’t eat much bread.” He dug into his breakfast, downed a swallow of eggs and coffee and put the cup down. “How did you learn to do that?” he asked.

“What?”

“The positions on the plate.”

“Oh. We had a blind lady who went to our church. I used to sit with her when we had picnics. She taught me. That was how she managed her food. She was eighty-six and she could ride a bike and play the piano. I was very fond of her.”

He finished eating, then leaned back with a sigh and pursed his lips. “Did she teach you anything else about blind people?”

“That you never grab them. It disconcerts them.” She told him about the guide dog the woman had, and her determination to learn Braille.

He was smiling faintly. “You learned a lot.”

“I listened,” she said simply. “People mostly don’t listen. They want to tell you about themselves, they want to discuss the latest vote on the reality shows and the latest fashions.” She sighed. “I never cared about those things. I don’t watch much television.”

“I listen to the news. I don’t follow anything except the stock market.”

There was a brief, companionable silence while she finished her coffee.

“You said you were in between jobs.”

“Just briefly. I’m going to put my name down with one of the temporary agencies in Gainesville...”

“Come work for me.”

She almost dropped the cup. “What?”

“Come work for me,” he repeated. “I have secretaries in all my corporate offices, but I don’t have a private secretary. Administrative assistant. Whatever the hell you call it. Someone to take dictation, answer the phone, make appointments and see to it that I keep them. Things like that. I used to have the Atlanta office send someone up, but I don’t want my condition to get around.”

She knew what he meant. Any bad news about his health would probably drop stock prices. People gossiped.

So he was offering her a job. She didn’t dare. She couldn’t. But she wanted to. “For how long?” she asked breathlessly.

“We’ll give it a month’s probation to see if we suit each other. How about that?” he asked, and his face tensed, as if her reply really mattered.

She smiled. A man like him wouldn’t care whether she said yes or no. It would be insane to agree. If he ever found out who she was, if he ever recognized her voice...

On the other hand, she could help him, take care of him, try to make up for what she’d done to him. It pained her to realize the price he’d paid for her stupidity. If only she’d never gotten behind the wheel of the stupid boat, if only she’d looked where she was going!

“Well?” he prompted curtly.

“I...I would like to,” she heard herself saying with absolute horror. It was nuts!

His face relaxed. He drew in a breath. “Fine. You’ll live in. Marie can show you to a bedroom later and help you get settled.” He named a salary that was six times what Mamie paid her.

She blanched. Her gasp was audible.

“Not enough?” he chided.

“Not enough?” she burst out. “I don’t make that much in a year!”

“You’ll earn it,” he said, and his pale eyes twinkled faintly. “I’m a difficult man, Emma. You may wish you’d said no.”

“If you get too troublesome, I’ll push you headfirst into the lake and use my alligator whistle.”

He thought for a minute, and then burst out laughing. “If you can find an alligator in any North Georgia lake, I’ll double your salary,” he mused. “All right. We’ll give it a month.”

* * *

The first few days were hectic. There was a learning curve, because he wasn’t as flighty as some of her bosses had been. He was studious, methodical, exacting and sometimes maddening. He wanted files in a certain order. He wanted letters done exactly as he said, even if they weren’t always polite. He wanted routine in everything. Emma found it exasperating.

“You’re making that sound again,” he said curtly from his desk. “Now what?”

“I feel like I need to ask permission to change my clothes,” she muttered. “Organization. Heavens! I’ve never been able to organize anything in my life. I’m too scatterbrained.”

“You’ll learn. You can pretend you’re in the military.”

“I’m not going on military time, and I’m not saluting you,” she shot back.

He chuckled. “Okay.”

“You’ve got two thousand unanswered emails,” she added.

“Go through them and delete the ads. That should get rid of ninety percent.”

“I need a program that does that automatically,” she murmured.

“Then go online and download one,” he said.

She almost sighed again, but he was looking surly this morning. “Yes, sir,” she said instead.

“How sweet that sounds,” he snarled.

“Sweet like vinegar, sir, the better to douse you with,” she muttered.

He chuckled.

The phone rang and she answered it.

It was a woman. She asked for Connor. Emma had no idea who the woman actually was; she just handed the phone to Connor and went back to work.

There was a terse conversation. It ended with a short curse and the phone being slammed down on the desk.

“Don’t ever put that woman through again, do you understand me, Emma?” he snapped.

“Yes, sir!” she said at once, reddening.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Damn women everywhere!” he cursed. “I gave her a mink and a Ferrari and a diamond the size of a hen egg, and she can’t understand that it was to get her out of my hair!”

“Poor man, stalked by women, not safe even in his own home,” Emma mused. “Perhaps we should build a fence.”

“Damn it!” he exploded. He stood up, his eyes blazing, furious. “Do you think I’m kidding?”

She drew in her breath. He looked formidable when he lost his temper. She sat quietly, waiting for the rest of the explosion.

“She wants to make up,” he snarled. “Which means she wants more presents from me, and she’s willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to get back into my life. I would rather feed myself to a shark!”

She wanted so badly to invite him to, but that way lay disaster. She just sat still, like a statue.

“I don’t want marriage. I don’t want a family. I’m happy with my life just the way it is. She said that I needed a son to inherit what I’ve got. A son.” He slammed his fist down on the desk and Emma jumped. “What she meant was that she wanted to get pregnant with my child and have me support her for the next eighteen years! No damned way!”

She didn’t say a word.

“I’ve always been careful,” he said through his teeth. “Always prepared. They said they were using birth control, but I never believed it. All my adult life, I’ve dodged women trying to trap me into marriage. All I wanted was brief affairs. They wanted forever. There is no forever!” he ground out. “Only damned fools believe there is!”

She was almost shivering now. The force of his rage was intimidating, even when he was sightless.

“And you put her through,” he added, looking toward where he thought she might be. “You put her right through to me without asking if I wanted to talk to her. By God, you do that again, and I’ll throw you out on the front lawn in your damned nightgown!”

She fought back tears.

“Do you understand? Talk to me!”

“I understand, Mr. Sinclair,” she said shakily.

“Good!”

She tried to type, but her hands were shaking too hard.

“Get me some coffee,” he snapped.

“Yes, sir.” She got up from her chair, still wobbly. Her voice had sounded shaky.

“Emma!”

She stopped. “Yes, s-sir?” she stammered.

He hesitated. Frowned. “Emma, come here,” he said in a tone like velvet, soft and gentle. “Come on.”

She went to him slowly, disturbed and shivering.

He felt for her shoulder and pulled her suddenly right into his arms, folding her close to that warm, magnificent strength. She laid her cheek against his chest and the tears stained the fabric.

“You’re crying,” he chided. “Come on, Emma, I’m not an ogre.”

“Yes, you are,” she said through tears. “You’re scary like one.”

“So people tell me.” He kissed her hair. She made him feel guilty. It had been ages since a woman had accomplished that. “Come on. Stop crying. I won’t yell anymore.”

“I didn’t know who she was,” she sobbed.

He held her closer, burying his face in her throat, petting the soft, long hair that ran down her shoulders. Then his big hands smoothed gently along her spine. “I didn’t realize that.” His mouth moved on her neck.

She gasped. Her heart raced. This close to him, she was feeling odd sensations, ripples of pleasure that she’d never experienced, not even with Steven. This man had a sensual magnetism that was uniquely his.

“You like this,” he teased.

“Mr. Sinclair...” she protested.

He laughed, deep in his throat.

“I have to go...”

His cheek slid against hers. “Do you?” he whispered as his mouth moved close to hers, hovered over it.

“I should...” she choked.

“Should you?” he whispered.

She didn’t know what to do. There had only been Steven in her life, and he’d barely touched her. Theirs had been a cerebral sort of relationship until he found out what her father did for a living and dumped her. She had no experience at all with the sort of flirting Connor was subjecting her to. She stiffened in his arms.

He drew back, his eyes narrowed. He wished that he could see her face. Her young body was stiff as a board. But her breath was fluttering at his collarbone. He could feel her heart beating like a butterfly. She was attracted to him. Very attracted, by the feel of her. But she was also frightened.

He frowned. “What are you afraid of, Emma?” he whispered.

Both her hands pressed against his broad chest, feeling the hard, warm muscle under his shirt. “Please,” she faltered.

He let her go. He didn’t seem to be angry anymore. He looked more puzzled than anything else.

She almost ran out of the room. But she didn’t. She stood her ground. And went back to her desk.

Three

Emma took dictation on a letter he was writing to his attorney. She was barely aware of what she was writing down. It had upset her, that blatant, unbridled anger. But what had followed it had upset her even more.

She was vulnerable with him. It was surprising, because he was so much older than she was, almost a generation. But when he touched her, the years fell away. She felt far different with him than she’d ever felt with Steven, and it scared her.

She tried to tell herself that he was just very experienced with women. That was what it was. But there had to be an attraction in the first place. He’d been amused by her reactions, but then he’d gone silent. He was still silent, in between dictation. He was frowning, as if he was worrying a puzzle in his mind.

“Read that back,” he said when he finished dictating.

She read the letter to him.

He drew in an irritated breath and ran a restless hand through his thick, wavy hair. “I hate not being able to read my own damned letters,” he muttered.

“It will get easier as you go along,” she said quietly.

His head lifted and turned, as if he was trying to see where she was. “Do you think so?” he asked with a rough laugh. “I very much doubt it.”

“We all have trials in life,” she said simply. “We get through them. Everything passes away—grief, anger, hope, joy, all of it. It’s both a blessing and a curse.”

“What have you gotten through? Are you even old enough to have had trials at all?”

She started to tell him about her father, then quickly bit her tongue. There were going to be pitfalls, working for him. Here was one of the biggest. She remembered telling him, when he was sighted, about Dolores, and her father, and the boy who’d broken their engagement when he found out her father ran beef cattle.

“We all have trials,” she replied.

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

She knew she’d never told him that. She doubted that Mamie had, or that he would have bothered to ask. “I’m twenty-three,” she said softly.

“Twenty-three.” His face was impassive. His eyes were narrow. His lips compressed. “Twenty-three.”

She couldn’t see into his mind or she might have been surprised at why he reacted that way to her age. He was seeing doors closing. She was twenty-three. He was thirty-eight. Her life was beginning. He was approaching the middle of his. Even if he’d been interested—and he was—her age put him off.

He leaned back in his chair and drew in a long breath. “My brother died on this lake,” he said abruptly.

“Your brother?”

“He and his wife were on a houseboat. There was a party. It was late on a Friday night. A couple of teenagers in a motorboat came flying around one of the coves and hit it broadside. My brother and his wife drowned in the time it took rescue people to get here and start looking for them.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she understood, too well, too late, his overreaction to her speeding in Mamie’s boat.

“He was the last living relative I had,” he replied. “We were close.” He glanced her way. “Do you have family, Emma?”

She hesitated. “Yes. My father lives on a small farm in North Carolina.” There was no reason for him to check that out, after all.

“Are you close?”

“Not so much. He’s very independent. But my mother and I were. She was very sweet and gentle.”

“How did she die?”

She swallowed. “She died in childbirth.”

A shadow passed over his broad face. “Unusual, isn’t it, in this day and age? Any decent obstetrician should be able to call in specialists if there are problems.”

“She was in labor for a long time and she had a hidden heart condition. She died of a heart attack.”

“I see. And the child?”

“A little girl. She was stillborn. They said she’d been dead for several days. They couldn’t save her.” That wasn’t the whole truth. She wasn’t telling him that her father had let her mother lie in childbirth for two horrible days, or that she’d died, ironically, while he was delivering a calf out in the pasture several miles from the house. By the time he finally got home to a sobbing Emma and a still, cold wife, it was too late to save her.

Emma’s father had delivered Emma at home, and he’d planned to do the same with his second child. Apparently it had never occurred to him that he should have taken his wife to the hospital when she started complaining of chest pain. She’d had an undiagnosed heart condition that the stress of prolonged childbirth had caused to go critical. She’d died of a massive coronary.

It had hurt, so badly, to lose her mother, especially at such a young age. Emma had watched her die, helpless to do anything. She had managed to live at home until graduation, but the minute she had a job, she moved to town and never looked back. Emma had nothing to do with her father at all these days. She wasn’t certain that she’d even be willing to ask him for help in a dire emergency. Or that he’d give her any. He was rarely sober enough to care about anything, anyway. He did manage to go out to work on the ranch, enough to keep it going, but his drinking was such a problem that he now had a huge turnover in cowboys.

Emma was ashamed of the way he behaved. Although his ranch was in Comanche Wells, everybody knew about him in nearby Jacobsville, where Emma had worked at the local café. At least she hadn’t told Connor about the drinking when he was sighted. She’d been too ashamed to admit it, even to a stranger.

“Emma?”

“Oh. Sorry. I was...lost in the past,” she confessed.

“You were with her when she died, weren’t you?” he asked suddenly, as if he knew.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

He crossed his long legs. “My sister-in-law was pregnant when she died.” His eyes glittered. “She didn’t want the baby. She said so, often.”